Amazingly, after watching four episodes of Tucci in Italy I have not booked a ticket to Italia to try some of the delicious food that has been showcased. I’m resigned to longing for it from the TV screen, though Tucci in Italy episode 4, “Abruzzo,” is not making it easy.
An isolated region because of its difficult topography — Tucci himself said that this was a region in Italy that he had not been to — but there was plenty of comfort food that caught my eye in this episode.
So, after sharing the dishes that I was dying to sample in Tucci in Italy’s episodes for Tuscany, Lombardy and Trento-Alto Adige, I’m not going to waste any more of your time and get to the main dish, or dishes, with the four meals from Tucci in Italy “Abruzzo” that I would love to eat right now.
Timballo
Lasagna is one of my favorite dishes of all time, so of course I was immediately fascinated with timballo, which seems quite similar to the Italian food staple.
Among the key differences, though, instead of layers of pasta, the timballo features layers of crespelle. Similar to crepes, crespelle are lighter as they use olive oil and water. With ragu, mini meatballs, onion, celery and carrots, parmesan cheese, egg wash with milk, the dish features 10-12 layers, based on how big the dish you’re cooking with is or when you run out of ingredients.
The finished product looks absolutely incredible.
Arrosticini
In the valleys of Abruzzo, along the side of the road, is a barbecue restaurant called Ristoro Muccinate. It actually began as a salon set for a 1970 western titled They Call Me Trinity, but now serves a very popular dish, arrosticini, which are skewers of cubed mutton.
Mutton, which comes from sheep, was a very popular dish in this episode, as Tucci also enjoyed a mutton stew, but arrosticini is the one that caught my eye. Tucci and his hosts grilled the meat in the open air on these long grills, with just salt really the main seasoning. But the results speak for themselves, as not only did Tucci enjoy them, but the dish is so popular that people come from all over the region to try it, having anywhere from 10-15 to 30-40 arrosticini at a time.
Confetti
I definitely have a sweet tooth, so when Tucci got to see how a candy called confetti — sugar coated almonds — was made, it immediately became something I wanted to try.
Confetti Pelino, which has been operating since the 18th century, still uses many of the older techniques to make their candy, including adding the layers of sugar to the almonds over a matter of days as they rotate in copper drums. That kind of dedication is then also put into arranging the candies in beautiful candied flower bouquets.
And if you’re curious, according to the candy store owner, the paper confetti that we know was named for these candies. Italians would throw the colored almonds during weddings, and then that idea was taken to make paper confetti.
Bread soup
Abruzzo also has a coastline, where Tucci enjoyed a number of delicious-looking dishes from a restaurant that is housed on an old fishing hut, called a trabucco. Among them was a lamb torcinello, which did look really good (see picture above), but another appetizer was what spoke to me.
That was bread soup, which features bread marinated in tomato, baked, then topped with prawn, slipper lobster and squid, orange tomato and zucchini sauces, and dried olive and powdered fig leaf. Though humble in its origins (the chef said it was inspired by a snack he had as a child), the dish looked gorgeous, and Tucci simply told him “bravo” after tasting it.
Tucci in Italy airs new episodes on Sundays on National Geographic, then streams on-demand on Hulu and Disney Plus.
